Needlework
by lannerz
Summary: (Young Royai) Riza Hawkeye is a mystery to Roy Mustang. When Riza's favorite dress is ruined and she becomes upset with him, Roy decides it's high time he does something to show her how much he appreciates all the work she's done to make him comfortable in her own home.


**Author's Note:** While this isn't my first foray into Fullmetal Alchemist territory, this is my first Royai fic. I tried to keep myself from writing one, but after reading hundreds of Royai fics, I lost the battle. They're probably one of my all-time favorite pairings, certainly my favorite anime pairing at least.

So, while trying to think of something to write, seeing as how there are a gajillion Royai fics out there, I thought about Roy's gloves. I honestly can't remember if I read it in a fic or if it was in the FMAB anime, but I remembered something about Roy himself stitching the flame alchemy symbol into his gloves and my brain just sort of ran with it… So yeah, prepare for some mindless fluff, which I don't write well.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own anything Fullmetal Alchemist or Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood related. You best believe if I did, there would've been more slight hints about Roy and Riza and just a lot more Riza in general.

**Needlework**

For the most part, Roy kept to himself while studying under Berthold Hawkeye and the man's daughter, Riza, kept to herself. Every now and then, they would make pleasant and polite conversation with each other, but it never went past that. Master Hawkeye hadn't outright told Roy to stay away from Riza, but it had been more or less implied after his first night when Roy had attempted to speak to the girl. Besides, Roy had his studies to keep him busy and Riza had…whatever it was that she did.

He had to admit though; he was intrigued by the girl. She seemed to do so much in the short period of time that she had. Whenever he woke up, there was a plate of breakfast waiting for him, still somehow warm, and the girl was nowhere to be found. It took him a week before he was able to find out that she went to a small school in the nearby village, walking there on her own as the sun rose. Despite the fact that everything that was once in Master Hawkeye's hands found itself lying on a random table or shelf or even the ground, the house was immaculate when he woke up.

Roy secretly wondered if maybe Riza was a vampire, considering the fact that it had to have been impossible for her to have the time to do all of that, finish her lessons to appease her strict father, eat something, and sleep.

"Sounds like she'd be a perfect housewife one day," his "sister" Anita sighed over the phone.

Roy frowned into the speaker. "She can't have much of a childhood. I mean, Master Hawkeye even gives me time to relax and take a break, but she's always doing something."

"Well, you could help out."

"By doing what? She does _everything_."

He could practically hear the smirk in Anita's voice. "You could do the dishes for once instead of leaving them out after you're done eating."

Thankfully, no one was around to see Roy's face turn red. "Who says that I don't–?"

Anita laughed. "I've known you for nearly five years, Roy; and you never did a single dish once."

Well, she was right about that. They spoke for a little while longer until Roy spotted Riza's small figure walking towards the house. He said his goodbyes, promising to do the dishes from now on, and then hung up the phone. As he watched Riza walk through the gate, he thought about what he should do. On one hand, he could just start doing the dishes without telling her, but he also wanted her to know that he did appreciate all she did to help make his stay here comfortable. Master Hawkeye was a brilliant alchemist and teacher, but he wasn't exactly…hospitable.

Smoothing down his hair, Roy took a deep breath and made his way to the front door so that he could meet her when she came inside. Having a conversation with Riza was always a preemptive decision. One, he had to decide it was worth the risk; and two, he had to work up the courage. Roy had always been a brave (almost foolhardy) boy, but there was something about the younger girl that caught him off guard. Maybe it was the serious, attentive look in her eyes that made her look older than him or how the very few smiles he'd seen from her were enough to confuse the hell out of him and leave him to distraction for hours on end.

When the door open and Riza stepped inside, carrying a basket filled with food she'd probably bought from the village market after school ended, Roy stepped forward and cleared his throat. "Good afternoon, Miss Riza, I just wanted to–"

The look on her face stopped Roy dead in his tracks.

Her cheeks were red and wet, her eyes red and a bit puffy, and she looked more like a wounded animal than anything else. His mouth hung open, not sure what to say or do. While he knew full well that Riza was not a cold machine and had emotions just like every other human being, she was incredibly guarded and only allowed what she wanted people to see come out. To see her like this, so open and raw, so easy to read the damage done… It threw him for a loop.

Riza ducked her head, her hair falling to hide her face in shadow.

"Are you alright, Miss Riza?" he asked, very seriously and very genuinely concerned.

"I'm fine." Stoic, as usual, but there was a slight tremble in her voice that betrayed her.

"You don't look it." Normally, Roy let her be, even when he knew that there was more to say. He let her have her secrets, let her lie, let her do whatever she felt most comfortable doing – but seeing her like this actually bothered him. Now that he couldn't see her face, he was able to pay attention to the rest of her. She was wearing a blue dress, probably her favorite since she wore it the most often; instead of being pristine and wrinkle-free like it always was, there were a few mud and grass stains on it and the right sleeve was torn practically clean off. "Who did this to you?"

Riza looked at him sharply. "No one. I tripped. That's all." The wounded animal look was still there, but there was also a hint of steel, warning him to back down.

Roy was not the kind of boy that backed down though. "You're lying. I can tell." A hard approach wouldn't work with her; and besides, he didn't want to be like that with her, especially after someone had treated her so rudely. He forced himself to soften, thinking of how Anita could flip a switch and turn all sweet and convince a guy to tell her almost anything. "It's okay. You can tell me. I just want to make sure you're truly fine."

"It's none of your business!" Riza snapped, causing Roy to step back in shock. "It's not like you actually care anyways. You just have to make sure I'm okay enough to make your dinner and clean up after you. That's all any of you alchemist students care about."

She dropped the basket on the ground, an apple tumbling out and rolling across the floor, and then stormed past him up the stairs, practically running to her bedroom. The sound of her bedroom door being slammed resounded in the back of his mind. All he could do for a long while was gawk at the apple lying on the ground, the silence echoing around him. The house was so quiet unless he and Master Hawkeye were practicing alchemy, but now it was almost unbearable. If he were to walk upstairs and listen carefully, he might even be able to hear her muffled, light cries, but even someone as stubborn and prideful as Roy Mustang knew when to leave someone alone.

Finally, Roy bent down to pick up the apple. Well, that had certainly been…different.

The next morning found Roy still groggy and a bit moody and very hungry. Riza hadn't left her room to make dinner, so Roy had had to make do with whatever he could whip up in the kitchen. Apparently, cooking was not his forte; and his one attempt to use alchemy to cook something had resembled flame alchemy more than anything else he'd tried to learn so far.

Not that Roy blamed her. She'd been upset and rightfully deserved to be so. It wasn't her fault that her father's study was completely useless at cooking (not that he'd ever admit that) and her father himself seemed to easily forget that the human body required daily sustenance. She deserved a break.

Roy meandered down to the kitchen, intent on eating a bunch of cereal, seeing as how he couldn't possibly mess that up. He nearly choked when he saw Riza sitting at the table, a plate of hot food in front of the empty chair across from her.

When she saw that she wasn't alone, Riza jumped to her feet, made an awkward, half-bow, and spoke at the speed of light, "Mister Mustang, I'm sorry for intruding on your breakfast, but I wanted to apologize for my behavior towards you last night and for not making your dinner. I acted very rudely and I promise to never insult you again."

"Roy."

Riza blinked. "Pardon me?"

"You can call me 'Roy', I mean." He wrinkled his nose. "'Mister Mustang' makes me sound so old."

"Oh…okay…" She sounded unsure, maybe even a little uncomfortable, but she nodded her head regardless. It struck him that the other alchemists her father had taught before him probably hadn't given the girl much thought or paid any attention to her. They took what she did for granted, maybe even expected it, which was why she'd gone out of her way to make sure he wasn't angry with her. "I'll leave you to your breakfast and your studies then."

With that, Riza walked out of the room, leaving Roy standing there even more shell-shocked than the afternoon before. This was more than they'd spoken in months. It was kind of a lot for him to handle. He scratched the back of his head and sat down at the table. Riza Hawkeye was a very confusing girl. He'd have to ask his sisters if all girls were like this or if she was an anomaly.

He wolfed down the food, relishing the warm and full feeling in his belly, and then went to the library where Master Hawkeye…was not waiting for him. Roy wandered around the house in an attempt to find his teacher, only to find the man in his office snoring against his desk, a blanket draped over his shoulders. Of course. The man worked until he fell asleep half the time. This meant that Roy had some free time to himself.

He went outside, taking in the sight of the sun rising over the village, and took a deep breath. The air was so clean and fresh here compared to the air in Central. He walked around the side of the house, heading to the garden, when something caught his eyes in the trash. Narrowing his eyes, he walked over to the bin and saw Riza's blue dress sitting on top of the trash like a discarded dream. Something in his chest ached. No, this wouldn't do at all.

Despite the fact that Roy had a particularly strong distaste towards dirty things, he took the ruined dress out of the trash and back inside with him. He laid the dress down gently on the floor of his room and examined it. The mud stains wouldn't be too difficult to clean, but those grass stains on the knees would be a struggle. Then there was the torn sleeve. Now that he could look at it in the light, he saw just how bad it was.

But Roy Mustang was an alchemist. If he couldn't clean a dress, then what good was he?

After flipping through the basic alchemy book he'd had since coming under his aunt's care, Roy drew a simple alchemy circle, placed the dress in the middle, rubbed his hands together, and pressed down on the ground. Blue light lit up the room, a glorious color and a crackling sound filling him up, and the dress floated for a second. When the light and sound faded, he looked down at his work and saw that the dress was clean, looking brand new – except for that damned torn sleeve.

Roy growled in frustration, picked at the dress, flipped through the book again, and sighed. Maybe alchemy couldn't solve everything. There wasn't always a simple way out. With alchemy, you sometimes forget that there are some things that you have to do by hand. Riza was in luck though because Roy had grown up surrounded by very resourceful women on a constant basis. Though it took some digging through the house, he found what he needed to fix up the torn sleeve and went to work. By the time Riza returned from school, he'd have something to show her just how much he did care about what she did for him.

It took a bit longer than expected and a lot more cursing, but once he was finished, Roy was pretty damn proud of his own work. The moment he saw Riza walking to the house, he grabbed the dress and rushed outside to meet her at the gate.

"Miss Riza!" he greeted breathlessly.

Riza looked a little taken aback, her eyes wide and cautious, but she didn't run away from him and her outfit hadn't been destroyed either. "Good afternoon…Roy."

He grinned and held out his gift. "Here, for you."

At first, she didn't do anything, just looked at him with an unsure look, but then she cautiously took the dress from his hands. The material crumpled softly in her hands as she gave it a careful look over and then pressed it against her chest. "It looks…it looks better than new."

"I know it's your favorite – I mean, you wear it a lot – and I felt so bad about last night and for making you feel like you had to apologize to me when you really didn't and I'm sorry for pressing you for details that really weren't any of my business and you do a lot and I don't do anything to help, so…" Roy took a deep breath. "Thank you."

Without warning, Riza hugged him. For a second time that day, Roy almost choked. It was very brief, but when she stepped back, she was blushing bright red. "You really didn't have to, but thank you." Her voice was warmer than it had ever been before, much softer than he'd imagined her capable of. She looked down at the dress and he noticed tears welling in her eyes. "My mother bought me this dress. It's…it's all I have of her."

Roy honestly didn't know what to say. Sure, they'd talked before. He'd been told before arriving that Master Hawkeye's wife had passed away years before due to some sort of illness. But no one in the house ever mentioned the woman and there weren't any pictures to show signs of her existence. Even more astonishing was the fact that Roy had never once heard Riza utter anything personal to him or her father. She never talked about herself; and when they did talk, it was almost always about him. How self-centered did she think he was? Hell, how self-centered was he?

Shrugging his shoulders, trying to act like he wasn't about to have a heart attack, Roy told her, "It's really no big deal. Alchemy is kind of like an easy button at times."

She turned the dress around in her hands, examining it more thoroughly, when she stopped. "This sleeve is hand-stitched," she noted, giving him an inquisitive look.

This time, it was his turn to blush. "Er, well… My sister Cora taught me. She loves doing needlework and all that stuff and she insisted that I learn. I guess it finally came in handy."

"I can't stitch for the life of me," Riza sighed. "I figured the dress was done for."

Roy snorted. "Well, I guess there is something you can't do. And here I thought you were all powerful."

Riza smiled at him, but there was something very different about this smile, a hint of mischievousness in it that he'd never seen before. He imagined no one had seen this smile from her before. "You still need someone to cook you dinner, don't you?"

As if on cue, Roy's stomach growled. He looked down at it and glared. "Traitor."

When Riza laughed, Roy thought it was the most glorious thing he'd ever heard, even more than the sound alchemy made when he performed it. It was also the first time he'd ever heard her laugh.


End file.
